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Acupuncture

I can’t say enough about how nice the energy is at our new location. Everyone smiles just walking into the place.

I thought I would post a few pictures for everyone that has not stopped by yet.

I also wanted to remind everyone there is only one week left of the Grand Opening Special of buying 10 wellness treatments for $300.00 any method of payment. After this week it goes back to it’s regular price of $400.00.

Please ask about the new Acugraph on your next visit and I will mark your file for a free Acupuncture exam. This amazing computer technology is able to read your meridian energy and generate a complete report within minutes. We will soon be charging $60.00 for this exam and report so make sure you reserve your’s now!

Anyway, here are some pictures. They don’t come close to matching the light and energy of this place. You have to see it in person to understand what I’m saying. See you soon.

When I graduated from Cleveland Chiropractic College and earned my Doctorate Degree, one of the things I had learned was the importance of keeping everything the patient told me completely confidential.
(Confidential – to be kept private, not shared, not discussed with anyone else, not revealed without direct instruction from the patient.)

I still take that responsibility very seriously. Nothing you say to me during a treatment session will ever be repeated outside that door, without your direct instructions.

But over the past 20 years, I have seen a loss of expectation for privacy in our health records.

Call me old fashioned, but I will not participate in this attack on your privacy. If you trust me as your doctor, I will keep records in a hand written format. Everything stays confidential and between you and me. Nothing leaves my files except directly to you. (or your next of kin)

So if you have a bad back, but don’t want your employer to know. Get in here.

If you need a safe ear to share your troubles, I promise to keep it confidential. (Unless you tell me your an axe murderer)

If something is going on with your kid, and you are afraid it might affect his chances for a scholarship, I can help.

There are so many situations the details of your health condition should be private, I am an oasis of privacy.

Let me help

Call the clinic at 816-436-9355 and set up a confidential appointment right now.

Marine Lance Cpl. Tristan Bell was injured in a jarring explosion that tore apart his armored vehicle, slammed a heavy radio into the back of his head and left him tortured by dizziness, insomnia, headaches and nightmares.

He is recovering on a padded table at Camp Leatherneck, Afghanistan, beneath strings of soft, white Christmas lights, with the dulcet notes of “Tao of Healing” playing on an iPod and a forest of acupuncture needles sprouting from his head, ear, hands and feet.

In a bit of battlefield improvisation, the Navy is experimenting with acupuncture and soothing atmospherics to treat Marines suffering from mild cases of traumatic brain injury, commonly called concussions—the most prevalent wound of the Afghan war.

After hitting on the idea in late November, Cmdr. Keith Stuessi used acupuncture, along with the music and lights, to treat more than 20 patients suffering from mild brain injuries. All but two or three saw marked improvements, including easier sleep, reduced anxiety and fewer headaches, he says. Cmdr. Earl Frantz, who replaced Cmdr. Stuessi at Camp Leatherneck last month, has taken charge of the acupuncture project and treated 28 more concussion patients.

“I think a couple years down the road, this will be standard care,” predicts Cmdr. Stuessi, a sports-medicine specialist turned acupuncture acolyte. “At some point you have to drink the Kool-Aid, and I have drunk the Kool-Aid.”

While researchers are still investigating how exactly it works, studies have found that acupuncture can help relieve pain, stress and a range of other conditions. The newest Defense Department and Department of Veterans Affairs clinical guidelines recommend acupuncture as a supplementary therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder, pain, anxiety and sleeplessness.

The VA is recruiting candidates for a study of acupuncture’s effectiveness in treating PTSD and traumatic brain injury. Based on other studies of its benefits, “there is good reason to believe that acupuncture will induce recovery across a number of trauma spectrum dysfunctions in patients with TBI and PTSD, at low cost and with little risk,” the VA wrote.

In 2008, the Navy put Cmdr. Stuessi, a 44-year-old from Wales, Wis., and a handful of other doctors through a 300-hour acupuncture course. When he came to Afghanistan in August to create a clinic to treat concussions and minor physical injuries, the commander brought his collapsible needling table. He expected to use it for the usual array of sprained ankles and sore backs.

Once at Camp Leatherneck, though, Cmdr. Stuessi stumbled across an article about using acupuncture to treat PTSD and realized many of the symptoms overlapped with those of mild traumatic brain injury: insomnia, headache, memory deficit, attention deficit, irritability and anxiety.

Lance Cpl. Bell, 22, from Billings, Mont., was patrolling a ridgeline in mid-January when the Marines in his vehicle spotted a half-buried bomb in the road ahead. They backed up onto a second booby-trap, leaving five of the seven crewmen, including Lance Cpl. Bell, unconscious. He took medicine, but the headaches and insomnia grew relentless as the days passed. “If I took a nap, I’d have nightmares and crazy dreams,” he says. “I don’t take naps.”

He was waiting to see his regular doctor when Cmdr. Stuessi invited him to watch another Marine get acupuncture. The lance corporal hates needles, but he was getting desperate. The back of his head throbbed so hard it made his eyes hurt. “I thought, ‘Something has to change here—I want to get back out there,’ ” he recalls.

The night after his first session, he slept eight hours, twice what he had managed before. Soon he was returning eagerly every three days, when the benefits began to fade. He made a recent visit after a bad night, in which he woke up disoriented, headed out for a smoke and hit his head on the bunk bed.

When Lance Cpl. Bell showed up at Cmdr. Stuessi’s plywood office in a green Marine Corps sweatshirt and camouflage pants, the doctor turned off the overhead fluorescent light and switched on a string of Christmas lights his wife had shipped him. He shuffled his iPod from “Mack the Knife” to the flute notes of his healing music.

He slipped one needle into the top of the Marine’s head, and more into his left ear and hands. As he worked, he spoke softly of “chi,” which he described as the rush of numbness or warmth when the needle hits the spot, and “shen men,” a point in the ear connected to anxiety and stress. “This is Liver Three,” he said, sliding a needle into Lance Cpl. Bell’s left foot and moving it until the Marine felt the desired effect.

A 2008 RAND Corp. study found that one in five troops who serve in Iraq or Afghanistan suffers traumatic brain injury, ranging from severe head wounds to more common concussions. Standard treatment for the latter can involve painkillers, antianxiety medication, sleeping pills, counseling and group therapy.

Acupuncture immediately appeared to speed recovery, Cmdr. Stuessi says. His first patient, unable to sleep more than four hours a night despite two weeks of standard treatment, put in 10 hours the night after his initial needling. Most other patients have seen similar results.

Lance Cpl. Dominic Collins, who shared a vehicle with Lance Cpl. Bell, was plagued by headaches after the bombing. One night in February, he dreamed he was being mortared. He rolled out of his bunk to take cover.

He declined the clinic’s offer of acupuncture. “It’s kind of not my thing,” he says. “I have tattoos, but it’s the idea of getting stuck” that puts him off.

One Marine tried jokingly to discourage Cpl. Francisco Sanchez, who hit two mines in one day, from using acupuncture by making him sit through an action movie in which the hero stabs the villain with a needle in the back of the neck. The villain’s eyes bleed. Then he dies.

But word has spread around camp, and Marines with everything from job stress to snuff addiction now plead for acupuncture.

“All we can say is we’ve learned from the Chinese on this,” Cmdr. Stuessi says. “They’ve been doing this for a couple thousand years.”

Like everything in the universe the seasons change. When our beautiful planet moves through it’s orbit around the sun the tilt of it’s axis causes a situation that leads to very noticeable changes down here on the surface. For you and I that means our activities are changing as well as the make up of our bodies. According to ancient Chinese medicine our bodies are beginning to sprout out of the water body into the wood body. So, what the heck does that mean?

It means the living energy in your body is migrating away from the kidney and bladder and reinforcing the organs of the Gall Bladder and Liver. If your body is healthy and balanced this change will occur without you even noticing it. But, if you already have an imbalance, or your lifestyle puts particular stress on the organs of power for the season it is very likely you will experience some discomfort.

I have already seen this in the clinic with a large upswing of Gall Bladder attacks. If you are experiencing pain in the right abdomen or the middle of your back that you cannot explain why, you are probably dealing with these changes.

So what does all this mean to you? By understanding this you can take some proactive measures to help the body through this transformation.

Organized medicine will soon become another sad chapter in the history of medical experimentation. Those who continue to follow organized medicine, take lots of drugs, undergo multiple surgical procedures and chemotherapy will themselves be part of that history, too, as conventional medicine is currently killing more than 750,000 Americans each year. That is supported by statistics found in the report Death by Medicine, available at Dr. Gary Null’s website at www.GaryNull.com.